The last beer I brewed was a saison, and it was both the first recipe I'd designed myself (based loosely on the mighty Saison Dupont), and the first time I'd done my own mashing (I'd only used extracts before that). So every word of this post was reminiscent of my own brewing experience, and just made me jealous that I was stuck at work reading this instead of brewing myself. Thanks for the vicarious thrills and inspiration! (And damn you for keeping your excellent-sounding saison on the other side of the country...)

I started brewing about eight months ago using Brooklyn Brew Shop's 1-gallon kits, so I've been loving the blow-by-blow as you and Ryan live through it. Of the many things I've learned since then, the most important is definitely this: short of getting lazy about cleaning & sanitizing (which you two clearly didn't), it's very hard to truly screw up a batch of beer. No matter what I think has gone wrong, none of the beers I've done so far has been less than drinkable, most have been fantastic. That said, damned if I can tell Cascade from Simcoe from Hallertau, so you clearly are some sort of wizard...